Mine your audience with 1:1 Interviews

As startups start their journey, they talk to friends and family about the great idea they have. Often they get warm and positive feedback. However, these are friends being nice to them, not customers who have a pain to solve. The startup founder will then head off into the world talking about the great product. In that act, they have not opened the space to listen to the real needs of their early customers. Nor have they opened the space to distinquish one sub-market from another.

While surveys might provide a way to demographically identify people who might be part of a submarket, it is the 1:1 interview which opens the space to learn. From that learning about the needs and pains of different groups of people, the early startup founder can find the effective path to growing their business.

Megan Averell founded The Insight Inn, a qualitative research and strategy firm, to bring people back into the heart of business decision-making. The aim of the Insight Inn is to delve into what truly motivates people, and energizes them at the core, so they might truly be seen and understood by the companies that attempt to reach them.

Over 15 years of working in both advertising and research, Megan was frustrated to find companies did not place enough value on the thoughts, opinions, and needs of the people who purchased from them. Yet, she firmly believed that understanding people is really the best way to strengthen strategic directions, and thus, strengthen business results.

In five years, the Insight Inn has been proud to serve varied clients such as AT&T, Jamba Juice, LinkedIn, Bacardi, Redfin, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, among many others. In 2014, Megan was the winner of the International AdMap Prize for her essay titled “The Age of Less,” which is available for download on Warc.com. She also was an invited speaker at the 2014 “Planningness” conference and the 2016 “3% Conference” for research work that was cited by The New York Times. You can also follow her on Twitter @Meggatron.